Castro’s ‘world-class’ health system ‘not so healthy’

Looks as though the vaunted, so-called “world-class” (more like third-world class, IMO) healthcare system of Castro’s Cuba isn’t so healthy itself, according to an article in today’s Miami Herald:

Six Cuban doctors — two still on the island, four now in Miami — say no one should trust the country’s health statistics reported to the World Health Organization.

Hilda Molina, a neurosurgeon in Havana who once ran an internationally known surgery center there, told a Latin American study group that she’s certain there has been a “manipulating of the health indicators, in the function of political-ideological interests.”

What?!?! Manipulation in the function of ideology in Cuba?!?! I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you.

Oh, but there’s more. Wanna know why Cuba’s healthcare system is so bad?

About 60 percent of all Cuban primary-care doctors are now working in Venezuela and elsewhere, according to Alcides Lorenzo RodrÃ­guez, the country’s chief of primary care before defecting in 2005.

And finally, from the standpoint of those who work in healthcare, their careers are ”totally controlled” by the state, (Nestor) Viamonte (he ran a primary-care clinic in Ciego de Avila before defecting) says. In 2003, he was ordered to go to Venezuela with the health brigades, and he knew if he didn’t go, he would be punished. He went — and fled to the United States a year later.

I wonder, oh how I wonder, what the Castro apologists will have to say about this.Â Especially when their Fearless Bearded Leader himself looked to doctors outside of Cuba for his recent gastro-intestinal ills.